Archy Marshall
A New Place 2 Drown
TRUE PANTHER
8/10
Redheaded British brothers Jack (the artist) and Archy (a.k.a. King Krule) Marshall have already gone down the multimedia route together previously with a 2014 collaborative art exhibition—Inner City Ooz—that tied together their collage-like brand of dreamy sonic and visual art. Their newest collaboration finds the Londoners building upon their personal relationship and their view of the works they’ve made collectively and singularly. Musically, A New Place 2 Drown—which functions as Archy’s contribution to the project—is a moodily evocative, echo-heavy bit of soul (“Swell,” “Arise Dear Brother”), jazz funk (“Ammi Ammi”), aquatic organ trio grooves (“Eye’s Drift”), and hot house hop (“Buffed Sky,” “Sex with Nobody”) that sounds dialed in from a solar space somewhere between John Oswald’s Plunderphonics and Sun Ra without his Arkestra. Though Archy occasionally lends his brooding, mumbling vocals to the amniotic proceedings, most of the voices within sound as if they’ve been conjured from a watery world beyond this planet—a lost radio transmission from far away.
